The social media censorship showdown – Protocol

Good morning! The clash of competing social media rulings is setting up a potential Supreme Court showdown that would have lasting consequences for tech platforms. Meanwhile, the video game industry is facing its own showdown: between giant studios and their unionizing workforces. Lets dive in.

Floridians who want to stick it to Big Tech will have to wait another day, after an 11th Circuit appeals court found that the crux of the states anti-social media censorship law violates the First Amendment.

Earlier this month, a 5th Circuit court of appeals lifted an injunction on a very similar law in Texas, without offering an opinion. That decision allowed the Texas law to take effect immediately, causing chaos for just about every major tech company. The fate of that law is now before the Supreme Court, which could reply to an emergency application on its shadow docket any day now.

The Florida opinion could offer the justices a road map. Heres what the court said about the law:

This could tee up the Supreme Court for a much bigger ruling. Its decision in response to the emergency application will only decide whether Texas law stays in effect while the 5th Circuit appeals case remains ongoing.

The impact of that decision would be an earthquake for tech platforms and would have huge ramifications for their users.

Until this week, not a single major American game developer had a unionized workforce of any kind. That just changed.

Workers at Raven Software voted to unionize on Monday. A group of more than 20 employees at the Activision Blizzard-owned company cast ballots in a NLRB-sanctioned election to determine whether Raven management would be forced to recognize the group. The union won, 19-3, making the Game Workers Alliance the first of its kind at a major American game studio.

The union was spurred by layoffs and Activision Blizzards ongoing crises. In December, Raven quality assurance testers went on strike for five weeks to protest layoffs. Parent company Activision, which is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft, is in the midst of its own turmoil.

Activision Blizzard has one week to appeal the decision before it must begin bargaining in good faith over a union contract. But statements and internal messages to staff make clear that management is not happy. However the company reacts, the GWAs union contract will have a ripple effect throughout the industry and its fast-growing labor movement.

Project Shield protects news and human rights organizations, government entities, and more from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These digital attacks are used by bad actors and cyber criminals to censor information by taking websites offline.

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Intel CEO (and former VMware CEO) Pat Gelsinger is mixed on Broadcoms potential acquisition of VMware:

Early Twitter exec Jason Goldman thinks Elon Musk is chaos for the company:

And Gwynne Shotwell defended Musk against allegations of sexual misconduct:

Terra investor Hassan Bassiri is certainly committed to the cause:

Adrian Cockcroft is retiring from Amazon after close to six years with the company. Cockcroft was most recently vice president of Sustainability Architecture.

Chime named Vineet Mehra chief marketing officer. He previously led growth and experience at Good Eggs.

Xiaomi inked a long-term partnership with Leica. Their first collaboration will be a smartphone released in July.

The worlds 50 richest people lost half a trillion dollars between them so far this year at least on paper. Elon Musk alone has lost close to $70 billion, or about 1.5 Twitters.

Klarna is laying off 10% of its workforce of about 6,500 employees. The news follows reports that its valuation fell by 30% to $30 billion. PayPal is also laying off workers.

Snap will miss its revenue and earnings guidance for the quarter. It will slow hiring in response.

Andy Jassy has a big AGM to deal with on Wednesday. He'll face shareholder questions about Amazon's working conditions, executive pay and tax.

Broadcom might pony up as much as $60 billion for VMware, according to the WSJ.

Shareholders of Didi voted to delist the company from the New York Stock Exchange.

Samsung said it would invest $350 billion over five years in next-generation technologies, mainly in South Korea.

Airbnb is reportedly planning to exit China. The company is expected to take down all listings in the country this summer.

Meta will give researchers access to targeting data for political ads, finally giving the academics the access theyve wanted for years.

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine is suing Mark Zuckerberg over his responsibility for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The tech job market isnt cooling off (yet), but the economic downturn could change the way workers get paid. Fat salaries arent disappearing anytime soon, but tech companies will look to cut costs in other ways.

Cushy benefits packages and huge annual merit increases are easy places to cut back, according to compensation consultants. The amount of equity companies give to employees and the frequency of stock grants will also be scrutinized.

But experts also say the time is ripe for startups to land top talent. Many tech giants plan to slow hiring or freeze it altogether this year, which will make the market less competitive. And Big Tech workers looking for a fresh challenge might want to jump ship for an exciting growth opportunity.

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) is a team that investigates threat actors and combats cyber crime to help keep everyone safe online, including high-risk users, by increasing protections based on attacker techniques and through regular updates to the security community.

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The social media censorship showdown - Protocol